


The Light in the Darkness

by Jackofalltrades628



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: F/M, Original Character(s), Original Female Character(s) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:07:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24666601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackofalltrades628/pseuds/Jackofalltrades628
Summary: Pitch Black has failed for the last time, and has put his wicked endeavors behind him for good.Resigned to walk the earth alone for the rest of his eternal life, he accepts the daunting reality of solitude now that no one can see him.Resigned, that is, until he meets a fresh-faced spirit in the form of a young woman named Polaris, the new spirit of the Wishing Star.Now met with a new soul who has no inkling of his past actions, Pitch wonders if he might be able to reinvent himself with the help of this all-forgiving beauty.Polaris Najme finds herself in a new earth that is completely unlike the one she had left centuries ago, and now, the first spirit she has met upon returning to humanity holds a secretive past and a refreshing view of the world.Can the two of them find serenity in one another?Will Pitch stay focused in his vow of pacifism?Can Polaris learn to understand this new humanity as she adheres to her new role?
Relationships: Pitch Black/Polaris
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This will be the start of a series from both Pitch and Polaris' perspectives, and should remain fairly PG for the most part-- I will include archive warnings should anything change! Thank you ever so much for reading, I hope you enjoy!

For all the torment that the nightmares had put him through, Pitch thought, stealing his coat had been overkill.

  
And for him, that was saying something.

He had wrested himself free of the ground, peeling strips of torn onyx fabric from his back that seemed to be held together only by strands of dried blood and sheer stubbornness at this point. Trying to rub the grime from his hands had become a moot point, as the dirt and darkness-knew-what-else had to have been well-set into his skin by now.  
The cold cascade of moonlight that fell across him as he stood in the clearing caught every inch of soot and filth that clung to him.

  
I _s this funny to you, old friend?_ He asked the air. _I match what’s on the inside now, don’t I?_

  
He was a damned fool, that’s what he was.

  
How had he actually thought that going up against the four most powerful—now five most powerful – spirits in all contrition would be a successful endeavor?

Not even turning their own powers against them had worked. He shuddered at the mere thought of the Sandman’s eyes as he had returned from his short death, only to be emboldened by the belief of the children.

  
So that was it, then?

  
He had been defeated by an old man, a rabbit, a fairy, a mute narcoleptic dust wizard and some pitiful excuse for a teenager with a bad case of frostbite.

  
 _Not to mention_ , he added with a growl, _a handful of children, several overgrown yetis and two elves with a combined IQ of six._

  
And the nightmares.

  
Not to forget the nightmares.

  
How could he? The scars that covered his back, face and hands were still fresh.

He ran his hands through his hair—snarled and tangled on a good day—and with it came a clump of black nightmare sand—he recoiled at the sheer feel of it.

  
 _No._ That was certain. _Never again._

  
He twisted his fingers together until the nightmare sand had fallen pitifully to the earth, and with an added thought, he shook out his hair to rid any remaining grains.

  
As it fell, he ignored the twitching sensation that danced in his fingertips. _Make more,_ it seemed to say. _All you’d need is a dream, just one simple dream._

  
But Pitch wanted to stay as far away from dreams as humanly—or spiritually—possible.

Even the sheer sight of a child would make his stomach turn if he saw one again.

  
He knew, now, that with a simple touch, any child could take his centuries of planning, practicing, and perfecting, and turn them into nothing. A simple touch, and all his eternal life’s work was for naught.

  
If that thought wasn’t sobering enough to encourage him to give up, he didn’t know what was.

He stretched his arms over his head and felt his ribs strain against his skin. His wounds screamed with the motion, but he welcomed the pain. Let it serve as a reminder of what happened when he overestimated his abilities.

  
If he tried, even with the little magic he possessed, he could have erased the scars from his appearance.

He could change his appearance to look however he wished, truth be told, but he had neglected to for millennia.

Why change what had stricken fear into the hearts of the weak when he was at the height of his power? The Dark Ages had been his prime, and he had taken pride in the fact that his grisly face had lived in the nightmares of children across the globe.

  
He would have laughed had his throat not been hoarse from screaming.

  
He was a fool.

  
He was a fool for living in the past for so long. He was a fool for thinking that a lone man with an army of dust could defeat the rest of the world.

  
He was a fool for dreaming that victory could ever be his.

  
He was a fool for believing that the nightmares wouldn’t turn on him.

  
He was a fool for thinking that he could do it alone.

That was why the Guardians had won, in the end. Because they had had each other. Take them on alone, one by one, and maybe he could have gotten closer, but he had tried to gather them together, and that was why he had failed.

He lifted his head from the ground where the nightmare sand laid in a heap and he brought his gaze to the moon.

  
The round, full, ever-prideful moon.

  
_You win then, old friend. I’ll stay alone._

Alone would be safe. It would be horrid, ghastly, and the worst way to pass the next millennia. But he was beyond used to it by now.

  
Alone and hidden away, with eyes to the present rather than the past.

  
No more fruitless fantasies.

  
It was him against the world from now on, and that was that.

It was only when he took a step forward that he realized the nightmares had taken his shoes, too.

They had been a comfortable leather once, molded to his feet and soft enough that they made no sound when he walked.

He had lived so long with them that the feeling of dirt beneath his feet was unsettling, but not entirely unpleasant.

  
Blessedly, the ground was not frozen. How long had he been underground? It must have been well into summer by now, judging from the moisture in the air. That, or he had resurfaced in some new part of the world.

  
On timid feet, he strode as carefully as he could on this new ground and made his way forward to a clump of reeds. If he remembered anything from his days as a human, it was that where there were reeds, there was water.

  
Behind the reeds was a pool too small to be called a pond, but too large to be called a puddle. Regardless of the name, he knelt by the bank and examined his face.

  
_Darkness._

  
The scarring was worse than he had thought.

  
His blood, silvery when fresh and the color of ink when dried, ran from his temples and cheekbones in streaks.

A long gash that must have come from a particularly feisty filly stretched from the middle of his forehead, across his nose and down to his opposite cheekbone.

  
_Why were nightmare hooves so sharp?_

  
He reached into the water, cupped his hands and washed at his body and face until the top of the water was tinged grey. The ivory sheen at the top of the pool made the water more reflective than before, and he caught his eyes with a renewed sense of clarity.

  
 _I’m not who I was when I started this,_ he thought. _I’m someone completely different._

  
The scars that now dappled over his body were only the start, he decided, and with a fixed stare on his reflection, he began anew.

He gazed at the man in the water until the sharp point of his chin melted into something softer.

He brought his jaw back until the was satisfied with the chiseled shape it took where his head met his ear and was not dissatisfied with the rounder shape his face took on. Emaciated as he was, he at least looked less like a famine victim now that his face was broader.

  
He toyed with the shape of his ears before finally settling on something that resembled a point, but not so far as to make them anything inhuman.

  
The hooked nose that he had been so proud of in his days as the bogeyman morphed into something smaller and softer, though he traversed between several different shapes before finally settling on something that wasn’t as sharp as his original nose but wasn’t round, either.

  
His tangled hair worked itself over and over until it was shorter, straighter, and altogether neater than before.

His height he kept the same, along with the majority of the rest of his body. No one was likely to see anything other than his face anyway, and he had always been satisfied with his form.

  
He healed the fresh wounds across his flesh but kept the scars. They would be a symbol to the few unfortunate souls who could still see his pitiful visage: _this is a man who has lost, and lost magnificently. The sight of him would bring forth pity rather than fear._

  
The eyes he saved for last—the yellow eyes that had struck fear into humanity for so long.

  
Admittedly, he felt some hesitance towards changing them; he had loved the delicious tingle that went down his spine when others met his eyes and became visibly disturbed…

  
 _But that was then,_ he reminded himself. _This was now._

  
Gathering his courage, he flicked the ends of his eyes downward and was startled at the change such a subtle movement made. Suddenly, he was no longer a spirit. Or at least, he didn’t look like one.

  
He looked like… well, he looked like a man.

  
He wasn’t a demon or a beast any longer, he was… he was…

  
With a deep breath, he closed his eyes, and when he opened them, his amber eyes had been replaced with eyes so brown, they were almost black.  
No, they were black. But even that was an improvement.

  
He was him.


	2. The Servant of Light

It was a languid thing, milky-white and sparkling gold. Floating through the cool night air, it glistened and shone as water touched by the sun, but it only ever appeared at night.

Oh, how it glowed.

Polaris did not know how it had first appeared, but the glowing spirit had followed her for the past several nights, bobbing through the air as liquid did.

It floated behind her at the level of her head or higher.

It stopped when she stopped and rested when she did, and as sure as the sunset, it was always by her side when night fell and it left just as quickly when the sun rose again.

At first, she had been wary of the strange little ball of light, but now she welcomed the company. Walking through the forest was a lonely task, and though it had never spoken, it shook and blinked its light at the end of her questions, and so she felt, in a way, that it understood.

Once, she had even beckoned it over to shed light on her when her hair had gotten snagged on a bit of bramble. The thing had eagerly swept to her side and hung in place over the bush until her opal hair was freed.

With each night, it came closer—first hovering at an arm’s distance, then an elbow’s, and finally tonight, when she could feel its wispy tendrils brush against her neck if she paused for a long moment.

On the sole occasion she had ever reached out a hand to it, she was surprised to find that it was warm to the touch, like a ray of sunlight. It was sweet, like a pet almost, and she had to resist the urge to hold it close to her and whisper to it like a kept dove.

_So what was it?_

_If this little thing was going to follow her around_ , she thought as she pushed through a clearing of tall grass, _she had might as well find out what it was, or at least give it a name_.

She lifted her skirt in two hands and went to take a large step over a patch of overgrown grass, only to trip on the edge of her hem and before she could react— _Splat!_ She was on the ground.

Huffing, she sat upright and attempted to free her legs from the tangle of fabric. The night was so dark—she was in the middle of Greece somewhere, with no lights whatsoever around— without her little ball of light, she could hardly see her hands in front of her.

She turned her head to the warm glow over her shoulder and let out a sigh with her mouth in a half-smile.

“Could you come closer, please? Just over to my legs, I can’t see what I’m snagged on.”

The little ball floated closer until it was above her head; she must have looked like one of the Pharaohs Baba had shown her once in a drawing, with the round sun perched atop their brows.

Alas, the shadow of her head blocked the light from her legs, and so tangled was she that she couldn’t shift to either side.

“Almost, could you come closer?” It was easy to maintain her patience with the little creature, and when it sank lower until it touched her head, she let out a laugh.

“No, that’s not right,” she said, the joy falling out of her like water. “Here,” She freed a hand from below her legs and opened it into the air until it was aloft at the same height as her head. “Can you go to my hand? Here? It would help me tremendously.”

The little thing bobbed up and down, she saw from the change in her shadow, but it did not move to her hand.

“Here, like this. Here,” she tried, closing her hand and then opening it again. “I need you to go to my hand.”

Now the light moved in the opposite direction she wanted, then swiftly returned to her head. “All right, let’s see…” she thought aloud, changing her tactics.

Slowly, she extended a hand towards the creature until her fingers reached the warm air around it.

As she began inching her hand closer towards her leg, she was pleased to find that the light moved with her hand and brought visibility to the dark ground.

The little ball tittered and shook in her open hand, blinking in a way that she could almost take for laughing. “Am I… tickling you?” She wondered, chuckling along with the creature’s movement as she held her hand in place over her body.

By the light of the creature, she wrested her legs free from the maze of tangles and righted herself on her feet once again.

“I appreciate your help, little one.” She uncurled her fingers and the ball hung in place. “Heaven knows I’ll likely need it again soon. I didn’t have much choice in the wardrobe, suffice to say.”

At home in Khafif, her dresses had been shapeless, and the skirts were easy to hold in her hand as she ascended the stairs in her father’s house.

When she sat in the garden to watch doves chase after the seeds Mama sprinkled, she did so without fear of disrupting the skirt’s shape or wrinkling the material. Even in the hot desert sun, all she had had to do was rock back and forth or side to side and her lightweight clothes made a gentle breeze that cooled her skin.

Now, in this strange dress that sparkled like moonlight, it felt as though she were wearing hundreds of skirts. Despite its weight, it hardly gave her warmth in the cool night, and she worried what she might do against the cold as the two of them continued on their journey northward.

“You know,” she said, righting herself on her feet once again, “back where I am from, there were men who used to travel as you and I do, except they traveled to pay their respect to the Prophet, blessings upon him.”

The light made no response, but in the silence of the night, she felt it goad her to continue.

“They would travel in caravans with hundreds of others, all making their way to Mecca so they might circle the great monument and pray with fellow servants of the Lord—anyone who could make the journey was encouraged to come. It was my father’s job to provide shelter and supplies to these men, and I heard all sorts of stories about their travels when I overheard them speaking.”

Her voice caught in her throat for a short moment, and she hesitated before she added, “It was my husband’s job to make the maps that led them to Mecca.” 

The little light did not make a sign of any understanding, and for once, she was grateful. If she continued thinking about Tobin she might start crying, and she had not yet wept in front of the creature. She hoped that she could keep it that way for now. 

She shook her head clear of the thoughts of the man she had loved so much in life, but her heart still ached with the thought of him. It had been more than five years now, yet the pain was still a fresh wound that stretched deeper every time she remembered him. How long would it be until she could think of him and feel a fond remembrance rather than pain? 

"This won't do..." she muttered. 

The ball of light curled around her until it was almost sitting at her shoulder, and both her skin and her heart warmed at the sight of it. It was almost as if it _knew_ how she felt. Now that she thought of it, she had felt happier around this little ball of light than she had in a long time.

"You know what _else_ won't do?" she asked, turning to it and lifting her hand so that her fingers brushed the tendrils. "I can't keep thinking of you as ' _the little light.'_ You need a name." 

Another circle around her head, before it came to rest at her fingertips. This made a bubble of a laugh rise from her. 

"Let's see... I knew a lovely widow back home who had a cat named _Nedjem._ It means 'sweetie,'" she tested, but the light did not budge. "No, I suppose you're right. It's bad luck to name things after the dead, anyway." 

She rested her finger on her chin and thought. "My father used to call me _habibi,_ which means 'my love.'" That hardly worked, though, either. Even though she spoke to the creature in Arabic, she hardly felt right giving it an Arabic name. Doing so would be tying it back to _her_ homeland, which it had no connection to. 

"What about... _Sylph?_ " 

In the weeks that followed her naming of the creature, she would try, time and time again, to remember how the name had popped into her head, but found nothing. 

What she _did_ understand in perfect clarity was that as she worked the word around her lips, the creature danced in the night air, obviously pleased. 

"Sylph? You like that?" she asked with a grin. 

The little light swirled and once again rested atop her hand before settling, and she boldly lifted her other hand to stroke its 'head'. 

"All right then, Sylph. You light the way, and we'll see if we can't find our way North." 

She lifted her right hand aloft, holding Sylph as a lantern and held her skirts in her left, carefully making her way towards the North with the moon at her back.


	3. Berries and Poison

The tip of the thorn inserted itself squarely into Pitch’s thumb, and yet he still pushed on until he had a fistful of berries in his grasp.

He hardly noticed the pain in his fingers anymore, and by now he had absentmindedly smeared blood on his trousers so many times that he now had two silvery swaths at either hip.

A memory pulled at the very edge of his consciousness—something of keeping a shred of cloth tucked into his pocket for that exact purpose when he had been a boy— but it flit away just as quickly.

Memories were like that, once you had been alive for so long.

If he sat down and tried to think for too long about his past during his first days as the King of Nightmares, he found it hard to tell whether the images he found were memories or dreams.

It only stood to reason that trying to recall his childhood was pointless, as more often than not, the act left him with headaches rather than results.

_Was it like that for the others?_

There was no point in asking any of the Guardians—they had as much desire to see him as he did they, but there were others.

Other spirits who had once lived and now walked the earth by way of magic. Did they remember their childhoods clearly? How had they come to exist? Were they as purposeless as he was?

Eating, for all spirits, was unnecessary.

It did no harm, and it often reminded them of life, but for as long as he could remember, he had never partaken.

There was always something more to focus on, some new raid to plan, some new child to torment.

As diligent as they were when it came to plotting, the nightmares were definitely not servants, and he would have felt ungodly foolish if he had sent out one of the creatures for something as trivial as a meal.

He hadn’t eaten in so long… he didn’t even know what foods he liked.

Now, he had no excuse.

He had nothing to do and nothing but time, and so he experimented with the different fruits of the earth that he found.

For now, he focused on berries and herbs, as he did not yet know if he would be able to touch a living animal, let alone kill one.

What’s more, firelight ached his eyes and seared his silvery skin, and he preferred to avoid it until he had found some sort of robe that he could once again used to cover himself.

The red ones, so far, he liked. The small round ones that grew in clusters high above the ground, or the oddly shaped cups that grew in brambles yet tasted so sweet and… and…

What was the word for it?

Something that flickered along your tongue like electricity, but painless?

Whatever it was, he had decided that the pain from the pricks was easily ignored in order to seek the treasure within.

The darker berries that grew closer to the ground with leaves like ovals, those he liked as well, but for a different reason.

As he crushed them beneath his tongue, the white meat of them spread with an oily sharpness that he knew could only be poison.

Funny, he had such trouble remembering what human life and existence had been, and yet the taste of poison was second nature.

Eating something that could only be harmful to humans only affirmed to him that he was not, and he felt emboldened by the idea that he could not die from something so trivial.

Disbelief could not kill him, that was sure.

He would stay like this until he faded into nothingness, until humanity itself was gone.

Perhaps even later than that.

And then what?

He chuckled, pressing his thumb between his teeth and licking at the pinprick that he had to show for his prize.

_Why then, it will be only me and the berries to walk the earth._

Loneliness and solitude did not frighten him, just as company and affability did not cheer him.

He had been alive for so long that he had become used to the sound of his internal monologue.

Nothing frightened him, now.

Nothing could frighten a man once he had fully admitted defeat.

Maybe one day he would fade into oblivion, but he figured that by then, it would be a welcome sleep after a hundred thousand lifetimes of torment. 

Lifetimes of children laughing him into the ground. Of guardians whipping him into a pulp. Of losing those he thought he could hold dearest…

Until then, he was more than content to walk alone.


	4. Names and North

If she was entirely honest with herself, Polaris had no idea where she was going.

In the months since she had left her homeland, she had only known one direction: North. The word had stuck in her mind as plainly and as simply as her own name, she did not know why.   
It was as just like how she knew which stars were which when she looked up at the sky, and how she could name each constellation in several names—she looked up and saw what Baba had always told her was The Giant, but what the fair-skinned traders of the West had called Orion. Another voice in her head echoed, The three stars, while another called out, the moist one! 

Her prior knowledge of the stars had been enough to find her way if ever she was lost—she knew how to trace her way back and forth from Mecca to Khafif should she ever need to make the journey, she could find her way home if ever she was lost from the market as a child by following each constellation, and, certainly, she knew her cardinal directions from the stars that marked them. 

But her knowledge had deepened since she had become… this.   
Whatever she was—something halfway between living and dead, trailing her way north with a peculiar ball of light at her side each night. 

Directions and locations had become a sense. The stars were an extension of her mind as her fingers were an extension of her body.

But where was she going? North, obviously, but how far was she to go? Was the cryptic direction going to vanish from her mind once she had gone far enough? Or would she go so far north that she would eventually go back down the other side of the globe, going south?

She kept the act of traveling for the nighttime—she could easily see the stars then, and she had grown to prefer walking when she had Sylph beside her. Besides, she did not yet know if people could see her; so far, any interactions she had had with adults had provided no conclusion. 

She had run into few people on her journey thus far, despite traveling at night and sticking to the areas she could sense were remote. If she saw them from afar and bowed her head in recognition, she was afforded no response. That said, she wasn’t certain of how she would have responded if a woman dressed as a heavenly messenger had greeted her back in Khafif. 

Children, however, would wave back to her waves, smile back at her smiles, and often the younger children would hide behind their parents’ legs if they could. She felt an ache of longing when she saw them. Longing to cup their faces, to kiss their foreheads, to hold them in her lap… 

Sylph may have been excellent company, but they were no child to hold as she had back home. Back when her courtyard was a place where children played and chased after doves, when she could press her lips into their soft cheeks and listen to the sound of their laughter. 

The little ball of light certainly did bob and weave in the air as though it were dancing, and it flickered in joy whenever it seemed to laugh, and in this way she thought of it as a child. It was certainly an excellent listener.  
“They used to call me Khala Polaris, you know,” she said that night, now walking with her skirt bunched up in her hands. This time, their terrain was a craggly mountain, but with the fistfuls of fabric clutched in her hands rather than around her legs, she fell far less. 

“I had no nieces or nephews, mind you, but they called me ‘Auntie’ nonetheless, so they were all my children. My courtyard—you do know what a courtyard is, yes?” Sylph gave a blink yes—or no, there was no way to tell—and so she continued.   
“Some people kept their courtyards just for themselves, but that wasn’t what my husband and I wanted. The ferns and flowers and spices that we grew there were too beautiful for only two people to enjoy. We kept the gates open each afternoon and the children would come and play in the fountain and chase the birds...”

She stepped carefully over a twisted root, silently grateful for being able to cross it without falling flat on her face for once. 

“We didn’t have children of our own, my husband and I. He was often away, doing… well,” she chuckled, “doing exactly what we are doing now, I suppose. He made maps, as I’ve told you, and he spent his days traveling the nearby lands, drawing what he saw so that people might make their way to the Holy City. People who didn’t know how to travel using the stars as we do.” 

Each time she looked back to it, Sylph’s light was focused and clear, as though it was looking back to her with wide eyes. 

“When he was away, the children would come and keep me company. It was like they knew when I was lonely or sad, and they always knew how to make me smile. They’d tell me what they were up to, what they were afraid of, what they liked and didn’t, and I kept their secrets. I remembered them all.

“There was Mariam, who was afraid of snakes and was always losing teeth—she was always so happy to show me when she had lost another. There was Abbas, who was older brother to Faruq, and he led him around everywhere like a dog on a rope. Always telling him how to do this and that… Naziha and Raisa were twins, and they liked to think that no one could tell them apart, but I always knew. They stood differently, you see, and had a way of speaking that was different than the other’s. Then there was Bassam, and you’ve never seen a chubbier boy! He was like a plump little bird, that one…” 

As she named them all, she could have reached out and held them in her arms again, they were so close in her mind’s eye. She could hear their voices in her ears, feel their warm little bodies perched atop her lap. 

By the time the sky had turned red with the oncoming sunrise and Sylph had faded with the darkness, she had named each child she had ever loved, and her face was soaked with tears.


End file.
